Why Rio+20 Will Succeed

By Gustavo A. B. da Fonseca

The global environmental agenda overflows with meetings. According to unofficial estimates, formal conferences on biodiversity, climate change, and desertification consume more than 240 days per year. Taking other environmental conventions into account, there are fewer days in a year than there are meetings to attend. Meetings and conferences have a tendency to over-promise and under-deliver. So when a conference comes along promising less than scintillating results, the tendency is to expect something truly unremarkable to emerge. Yet in spite of, or perhaps because of the low expectations for the Rio+20 Summit this June, there is reason to believe that the gathering could be one of the most important and forward-looking environmental conferences yet. You will need to bear with me, however, to understand why.

The Legacy, and the Promise, of Rio

By Monique Barbut, GEF CEO & Chairperson

This June the world community returns to Rio de Janeiro for the Rio+20 Summit. It is hard to believe that 20 years have passed since the first Earth Summit. So much has been accomplished as a result of that historic meeting; so much has changed; and so much remains to be done. The GEF is one of the children of Rio. The 1992 Earth Summit set the GEF in motion as the financial mechanism for important international environmental conventions.

Given the potential significance of the Rio+20 Summit, a strong GEF delegation comprised of technical field experts will attend and contribute on as many fronts as possible to the themes for which it has been providing financing for the past 20 years. We invite you to look into the Summit's opportunities to interact in different discussions fora, and we encourage you to think about the Summit's theme – the "Future we Want" – and what institutions and communities need to do to foster and sustain a better environment for our future.

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Behind the Numbers 2013The numbers tell a story: 21 years, $10.5 billion invested directly, $51 billion in cofinancing, and over 2,700 projects in more than 165 countries.

Contributing to Global SecurityIn recent decades, our planet's freshwater sources have been rapidly degraded by a range of global pressures such as population growth, food shortages and a changing climate. The world's rivers, lakes, and groundwater systems do not respect political borders and competing uses of water for drinking, irrigation and bulk supply. Together with the pollution of common water bodies, are increasing cross border tensions are increasing...

GEF Annual Report 2010The report offers a glimpse of some of the achievements of the GEF, including developments in internal operations, reforms to evaluation and monitoring processes, new projects and publications, expanded outreach to GEF agencies and civil society organizations (CSOs), and progress made in each of the GEF's area of work.